


Noble Cause Corruption

by wholesome



Category: McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Dragon Age AU, M/M, RPF, chaptered fic, ill add tags when i need to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2018-10-26 04:35:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10779684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholesome/pseuds/wholesome
Summary: A good ol' Dragon Age AU for them soft soft shipboys.





	1. The Meeting

     It seemed like the celebrations of Satinalia had only just passed, yet here Nicolas found himself again, shoulder to shoulder with servants at an extravagant Orlesian ball. Thankfully, he considered, he wasn’t here for the same reasons that most of these snobs were. The nobles were here to laugh, to socialize in their small groups. To follow the people around them with unmoving eyes hidden behind masks. Well, to follow people of importance. Nicolas, wearing a mask lifted from an elven servant and two cold blades hidden beneath his robe, goes unseen. They don’t bat an eye at him or notice the man they are swatting at, calling “elf boy”, asking for drinks from, is human. If he continues to do his job right, they won’t notice anything.

     It had been a little over a month ago whenever Nicolas had received the job offer to “take care of” a certain noble at this ball. A man from the noble House Kaden had sought him out specifically for the job, and the coin was good, so Nick saw no valid reason to decline. Now here he was, trying to stand tall as he can to look over the ornate headdresses and find a mask to match his description. He almost grins whenever he sees the satin-covered horns peeking out in the crowd. Almost. Nicolas easily twists his way through the crowd, around puffing skirts and under raised glasses, to get closer to the man. Instead, he finds that the noble has only gotten further during his pursuit. A woman has her hands grasped onto his target’s arm, and Nicolas can see the curl of a smile peeking out under his mask. She’s young, her mask laced and delicate, one Nick doesn’t recognize. She lifts her hand in a bold offering towards the main floor.

     Nick has since wandered over to one of the marble pillars, disinterestedly watching the exchange to see where he will need to follow. To his surprise, the noble shrugs her hand off of him. He backs away, hands up in a polite gesture, before excusing himself. For the briefest of seconds, the assassin swears he feels the man’s eyes swoop over him as he turns.  
There’s an old commoner’s saying that every man who’s ever worn a mask in Orlais has done wrongs worthy of death. Seeing the noble’s delicate hands slide onto the shoulder of a man a few pillars down from his previous conversation, Nick wonders what exactly this particular man must have done to deserve such a sentence. He briefly wishes that he would have asked. Then again, it didn’t really matter.

     Nicolas wanders close enough to the two gentleman that he can finally hear the gaudy tone of the man’s voice over the hustle and bustle of the party. His words slip out easily behind his mask, one that covers only half of his face and leads up into horns that are only vaguely reminiscent of halla in their curviness. Nick busies his hands with the minute task of rearranging glasses and plates while the noble ever approaches, eyes past the mask now visible. They are crinkled and fixed on the man in front of him, but Nick is not at the correct angle to attempt to recognize the man he’s talking to. After 10 minutes or so of the assassin trying his best to eavesdrop on the men, he hears the gaudy voice shout something in his direction.

     “Oh, there’s one of my men now!” Nick looks up, confused, the noble suddenly free of company. The man is very clearly facing him, hand holding up a glass in his direction. His free hand beckons him closer with a finger. Nick strides diligently over to him.

     “Yes ser?” he can smell alcohol on the man’s breath.

     “Dispose of this for me, yeah?” the noble doesn’t throw his arm around him or grab his shoulder like he did whenever he spoke to the other nobles at the party. He stands almost arms length away. Still, he presses the cool glass into Nick’s hands. Before he can go to take his leave, the noble stops.

     “Say, you’re wearing the mask of my house, and yet I don’t recognize you. Are you one of the newer ones?”

     Nicolas swallows. “Yes, ser.”

     The nobles eyes scan him from behind the mask, and Nick sees the faintest signal of an eyebrow quirking, unseen behind the silver plating. “..Well, do a better job than just standing next to me next time. I was holding that cup for nearly half an hour.”

     The man gives the glass a bit of a shove as he finally completely lets it go into the assassin’s hands. He promptly turns on his heel and disappears into the twirl of skirts on the ballroom floor. Nick looks down at the glass in his hands, and is surprised to find a damp, crumpled up piece of paper in the bottom of the glass.

     He looks up again, to be certain that the noble was not lingering close by before he quickly makes his way to the corner of the room. He dumps the remainders of ice cubes and the glass itself into a plant and unfolded the note. It reads:

 

G,

My darling, I must confess you look most ravishing under these lights tonight. Perhaps we could steal a moment together before the night comes to an end? If you are interested, we will meet up in the private quarters of the palace’s eastern wing. I will be there as soon as I can make a moment to after the dancing has ended.

Until then, D

 

     Nicolas actually scoffed. He was given a love note? Seriously? This guy was making it way too fucking easy for him. Perhaps he should offer to refund some of the House of Kaden’s precious finances for such a mission. Absolute child’s play. Still, he has no time to waste anymore. He now had a timeline to work with, and he doubts that House Kaden would take too kindly to a surprise two-for-one deal should he be late and have to take out this noble’s visitor as well. Nick was swift-footed as he once again makes his way through the nobles and out of the great hall. His footsteps are silent on the cool stone beneath his feet as he lifts the ribbon strung across the doorway to the eastern wing and slides under it. The palace was giant, no doubt, and for a moment he is actually worried that he would lose too much time just trying to find the room that his target had run off to. Before he could entertain that thought too deeply, he spots it. Warm candlelight flickers out through a crack in a door. That, and when he gets closer, he can hear.. faint humming? Nick pauses for a moment outside of the door. The humming grows into soft singing, and it’s definitely recognizable as the noble’s boisterous voice, but quiet now as he waits for his company.

     The assassin feels something in his guts tug at him, and he steps back from the door. He can feel the now warm metal of his blades press into his sides, urging him onward. Silently, he reaches up and unties the cheap horned mask from his face and drops it to the floor beside him. His fingers find the handles of each blade beneath his robe, and he stealthily pushes the door open with just the tip of his dagger. To the unperceptive eye of these pathetic nobles, he is completely invisible. Like smoke, he drifts impossibly quiet into the bedroom.

     There is no one lying on the bed, or sprawled into one of the chairs, as he had anticipated. In fact, there is no one to be seen in the bedroom at all. Even stranger, Nick soon notices that the quiet humming has completely stopped. Confused, he walks even further into the quarters. The candle that had previously given forth a small amount of light to the space and led him into the room suddenly blows out. His fingers clench tightly around the daggers in his hands, and he hears only the small creak of a door closing before he is suddenly struck upside the head with something very, very heavy and very, very metal. It cuts a harsh gash just above his temple. His stealthy charade completely broken, he stumbles forwards a few steps and collapses to the ground in front of him.

     When he goes to face his attacker, he sees the noble standing over him, a large skillet in his hands. The idea of the man somehow procuring a pan of all things to attack him is almost laughable, but Nick finds himself too dizzy to laugh.

     “You better start talking, and quick,” the noble spits down at him.

     Nick tries to speak, but his thoughts are garbled and fuzzy, and he manages little more than a nonsensical babble. He clenches his eyes shut, trying to focus before he attempts to speak again. “Really? You want to talk?”

     “Who sent you after me?”

     “Oh, fuck you. What are you going to do if I refuse? Kill me and wrap me up as a nice gift for your lover to find whenever they show up after the party?”

     The man smiles, and Nick’s eyes allow him to focus enough to see that the noble no longer has on his elaborate horned mask. Even more surprising than the fact he would de-mask at such a public event, even in private quarters, is the tattoos covering his cheeks and forehead. More surprising than that, are the knife-shaped ears on the sides of his head. A noble of Val Royeaux, and an elf? A dalish one at that? The man speaks up.

     “You still believe that letter’s real, huh?” and the twist Nick had felt in his gut outside of the bedroom hits him again.

     “Uh- Um.”

     “Tell me.”

     Nicolas’s eyes dart to the side, confirming that the hit had knocked his blades too far out of his reach for him to try to make a move on the man standing above him, even at the respectable distance. Shifting his vision so quickly makes his world turn black for a second, and he feels that dizziness swim in his brain again. He closes them instead of looking back at the noble.

     “House Kaden.”

     He hears a sigh. “Of course it is. Look, kid. Look at me.”

     Nick can feel blood from the split on his forehead drip down his cheek, and it takes almost all of his effort to open his eyes again to look at the man. Consciousness is becoming increasingly more difficult. He tries to speak again, and words continue to fail him.

     “Stay with me, here. I don’t want to hurt you. In fact,” blackness. “Buddy up on… thing! You could…” his words become more and more distant and after only a handful of seconds, Nicolas finds he can’t understand them at all. His vision is going in and out, and then out completely. After only another handful or so of seconds, he loses consciousness as well. He falls back onto the floor with a thunk.

..

     Griffin stands above his would-be assassin, now passed out at his feet. He groans, angrily throwing the skillet across the room onto the bed. He fucking knew better than to go around smacking people with heavy objects, especially when he needed to get answers out of them. He regards the man on the floor for a moment and lets out a distressed sigh as he goes to his bags. Griffin can’t very well just leave a rogue on the bedroom floor with a possibly fatal condition he caused out of mere over-zealousness now could he? It doesn’t take him very long to find the potion he’s looking for.

     Still, he doesn’t take any chances with the assassin. He sets the elixir down on a bedside table and hoists the man into a chair, tying him securely into place with the ropes holding the bed’s curtains into place. Only then does he tilt the man’s head back, part his lips, and feed him the potion.


	2. Griffin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys like world building and flashbacks! These next few chapters are going to get that out of the way.

     Two months earlier, almost to the hour, Griffin had been perched on the edge of Amos Kaden’s desk. He had worn one of his more plain outfits, the lack of frills only serving purpose to make the excessive unbuttoning of his blouse even more prominent. If Griffin had to guess, he would say it was working. The other man’s eyes hadn’t left him for a second since he’d entered the room. Amos was always careless and unguarded; even now he sat maskless across from Griffin, whom he arguably knew next to nothing about. The elf wasn’t so foolish. Even if he weren’t in the habit of hiding his identity for the sake of maintaining his status as a noble in Val Royeaux, it was both idiotic and borderline barbaric to be so open to strangers.

     Griffin looked down at him over the nose of his mask. He wouldn’t lie and say the man was particularly hideous, but Amos was without a doubt not his type. Thankfully, that didn’t matter in this current situation. Baron Kaden was privy to important information that Griffin needed, and if all he had to do to get access to it was bat his eyelashes and whisper in his ear for an hour or so.. Well, what’s the harm in that?

     “Your Lordship.”

     The man beneath him finally brought his eyes to meet the elf’s. The baron was already beginning to sweat under his gaze. His fingers twitched, a silent request to move his hand onto Griffin’s thigh; the motion went ignored.

     “You tease me, McElroy.”

     He smiled, and extended his hand to the man in front of him. “I like to tease.”

     Amos graciously accepted it, kissing across his knuckles and up his arm, to the point of standing in between his legs. His face hovered around the crook in Griffin’s neck, and he sighed breathily into the soft, lightly scented skin. A hand tugged gently on the hair at the nape of his neck, and once again he was forced to bring his eyes up to meet the other noble’s.

     “I need to know--”

     “Always, you need to know,” Baron Kaden’s brows furrowed, and his palms came to rest flatly on the table on each side of the other’s thighs. “Can you not once visit me for pleasure of my company?”

     “I find I get the most pleasure out of your company in conversation, Your Lordship.”

     The air between their faces felt almost unbearably thick for a moment, and Griffin almost would have sworn that the baron was going to continue his pursuit. Instead, he let out a resigned breath. His view dropped again, and his hands shifted to lightly grip the elf’s sides.

     “What do you want to know this time?”

…

     Griffin always left a candle lit by the door when he wasn’t home. Ever since he was young, the idea of coming home to a house that was completely dark gave him the chills. Seeing as he didn’t have anyone home to leave the lights on for him, a small candle on top of a silver plate would have to do for now. On the night that he had come home from Baron Kaden’s house, it had burnt out completely, and Griffin had cursed himself for losing track of time. It wasn’t like it was entirely his fault, though. The night only got more sour the later it had gotten.

     He had quietly made his way to his bedroom, lit the lamp next to the vanity he kept by the window, and sat down on his bench. The fabric of his shirt was wrinkled, no doubt from Amos’s heat and unwillingness to untangle his hands from Griffin’s being. The elf puffed out a breath in distaste.

     He untucked the front of his mask from the fabric of the back and pulled it away from his face, setting it down on the bench beside him. The small amount of makeup he’d applied before he left the house that morning to cover the markings upon his cheeks and forehead was starting to cake on his skin. Griffin pulled the rest of his headgear off by its decorative horns -- er, antlers -- and set it down next to the mask. All of that out of the way, he wasted no time picking up one of his cloth handkerchiefs and dipping it into the soapy mixture he had sitting aside.

     He was careful to avoid his eyes as he wiped off the second layer of his disguise, allowing his tattoos to show their face. The farther into the day it got, the worse it felt to stick to Val Royeaux’s beauty traditions. Makeup caked and clumped, masks gave you headaches and left indents on your skin, but that’s nothing compared to some of the marks the outfits left.

     Whenever he looks back at himself in the mirror, he finally sees himself, the person he is in between the gambles of playing the game of politics. He’s a true dalish elf, with pointed ears and faint, curling tattoos that symbolise Ghilan'nain, the Mother of Halla. He had first gotten them whenever he reached maturity, as was dalish custom. Actually, he had been one of the first people in his family in over a century to do so. His ancient ancestors had moved from the Dales, carrying as many elven artifacts that they could carry with them. They disguised themselves as humans, hid their tattoos, trimmed their ears, and sold off the goods. With that profit, they bought themselves a reputation, and after generations, the family was held in the high esteem it is today.

     Contrary to what one might believe, having grown up like this as well as seeing who he’d become today, Griffin was never quite the sociable child. Instead of busying himself in schoolwork or social affairs, he had always preferred to pour over ancient elven texts and histories in his father’s library. He made the choice to get the traditional tattoos of his chosen goddess, even if it would make his life a bit more difficult. It’s what he felt was right.

     He ran his fingers over the bumps the markings left on his skin and grinned coyly at his reflection. Maker, he was tired; it was time to get to bed.


	3. (Test)

Hey this is an aside out of character chapter that I’ll delete later but. Anyone interested in me continuing/finishing up this story or writing other fic for this pairing still? I have comment mod. on and I’m not going to approve any comments n’ stuff but I’ll be able to read ‘em.


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